


And God Help Me...

by InnerSpectrum



Series: Mystrade is Our Division Prompts [49]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Facebook: Mystrade is our Division Fic Prompts, Letters, Mystrade is our Division FB Fic Prompts, mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-10 01:49:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20127379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnerSpectrum/pseuds/InnerSpectrum
Summary: After an exhausting day Greg arrives home to a letter from Mycroft...





	And God Help Me...

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Mystrade is our Division FB Fic Prompts | Try\
> 
> These last few one-shots have turned into something of a continuing story. While each can stand on its own, based on its prompt, if it fits, I will be reordering them around to fit the tale chronologically as needed. This mini series begins at Part 45 with ["Out of Time"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19886461) and continues through here.

Greg sighed in abject relief as he passed the doorman grateful it was Darius the late-night guy. Darius acknowledged his presence with a pleasant greeting as he held the door, noted Greg’s exhaustion and went back to his post. Greg also liked Tucker who worked the evening shift, but every now and again the older man could get chatty. Sometimes the gossipy guard was blind to the cues to shut up when he was in a zone. Greg just was not in the mood to try to be polite and knew he would have been rude if Tucker didn’t take the hint.

He knew he was tired when it slowly dawned on him that it was Darius on shift. That meant it was after midnight. Working with foreign countries across several time zones he had not paid attention to his own. Now he knew why he felt so drained. It had been a while since he pulled such a late night. It had been a trying day with more to look forward to tomorrow and the day after if things were holding pace. What he and his team had thought were three individual trafficking rings may be one with several layers and an ambassador's missing teenage daughter put pressures on law enforcement at all levels.

Greg was grateful for the team he had. Lt. Luis Reyes from New York City, Charlie Kendrick from Toronto, Anton Giordano from Naples and the rest of his international task force were proving to be a very capable bunch of people. Granted, he and Alphonse Müller had gone through a little head butting at first when it was learned Greg got the job that had been initially offered to the man, but such is life in these things.

The German was good at his job, very good, but he was also how Greg knew he used to be sometimes, stubbornly adjusting some of the explanations to create a probable fact he was stuck on in his mind, instead of taking all the definite facts to create a solid explanation. Three weeks and two solid syndicate takedowns later, everyone on the task force, including Müller understood why Lestrade was in the lead. Now nearly three months in, the two men tried each other’s nerves now and again, but it was with grudging respect on both sides and Greg was grateful to have the man on his team. Still, today had been a long day for all of the leads as they tried to piece out the puzzle. Bleary eyed himself, Greg sent everyone home for the night.

It was days like these he both thanked and cursed knowing both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. He could not deny the former had helped him to be a better cop and the latter to be a better man.

On his way to the elevators. Greg was about to ignore his mailbox but changed his mind at the thought of Mycroft Holmes.

He knew what he would find. It was what he found almost daily these days.

A letter from Mycroft. Actually, two of them.

As always there never a name or a return address, just an envelope addressed to him with a postal mark from Great Britain. He was about to dismiss it when he realized the second letter was not from the UK but from… _Jaipur? He was in India?_

He had received a letter from his ex-lover almost daily since it began. Greg innately understood if a day was missed it was the postal service, not the man. That would be made up for with days like today when two letters arrived. 

Greg knew Mycroft knew he was not reading them. There was no need to ask his brother, Sherlock, or any of their mutual acquaintances if or why he had not. If any knew Mycroft wrote Greg daily, they respectfully did not ask him.

Still, Greg realized the Iceman wrote to him every single day.

Mycroft had not called. He had not texted. He had not emailed. All of these things that Mycroft could have done; things that would have been easier to do, faster to do. He chose instead to write him letters. He took time out of his day, every day to write him a letter. 

Greg stared at the boxes on his desk as he entered his apartment.

When it had become too much to fit in his desk he moved the letters into a covered box on his desk. Now three months and two days since he received the first one there were nearly one hundred letters in two boxes and fast encroaching on a third box, on his desk. Greg use the postmarks to keep them in date order. He knew it was not entirely accurate, but it was the best he could do until he was ready to actually read them.

Greg sat at his desk and stroked the heavy stationary of both envelopes. It had become his habit now to sniff and hold each up to the light.

He held each envelope up to the light to detect how much was written. Sometimes the envelope was dark, which meant a lot was written, Sometimes, like the very first letter he received three months ago, the envelope was very light when very little had been written. It was all deductions and guesses on his part, for other than the very first letter he had not so much as opened an envelope and even with first one he opened, Greg had refused to read the letter inside.

He then sniffed each to detect which scented ink, if any, was used in the writing. Occasionally, it was the dark grey ink with the wood & tobacco scent. Once it was rose scented red ink. That one arrived in mid-February, Greg almost, _almost_ threw it away out of spite. Most of the time it was the leather scented dark orange-brown ink. The scent that reminded Greg the most of Mycroft and his expensive cologne. For the first time the ink was an ocean blue color and its scent reminded him of the sea. It was on the envelope postmarked from Jaipur.

Greg could not help but smile as he understood the subtle hint. Mycroft was on a trip overseas.

_Even when overseas working Mycroft writes me. _

As he held the letter from Jaipur he realized from the something was written on the back. In the same marine blue ink on the sealed flap was one word. 

No part of a word.

_Plea_

Part of the a was incomplete and slightly smudged. He looked carefully at the roundish smudge and Greg knew.

Greg knew Mycroft was going to write _Please?_ Mycroft was asking him to please read the letters. It was partially written on this one letter, but Greg knew Mycroft meant all of them.

Because he was looking at it Greg as noticed the envelope was oddly dented at the top.

_The way one would hold an envelope as though about to rip…_

Greg softly gasped aloud in the knowledge that Mycroft was on the verge of destroying the evidence.

Destroying the evidence that he almost begged.

Destroying the evidence that he had cried.

Destroying the evidence that a tear had fallen on that unfinished _plea_.

Mycroft could have ripped the letter, started a new one, sent it and Greg would have been none the wiser to the moment of vulnerability of the Iceman.

_Yet he mailed it to me anyway, knowing I would know. He sent it._

“Oh Mycroft!”

Maybe it was the late hour. Maybe it was because he was exhausted. Maybe it was the evidence of that one solitary tear. Greg did not know. He did not even think about it.

At long last he reached into the first box of letters and removed the first envelope. The one he had opened, but never read.

The faint scent of leather still clung to the paper as he read the only thing Mycroft had to say to him at the time. The only thing he needed to say.

_I love you._

Greg opened the second letter…

_I am so sorry. I love you._

The third…

_I am such a fool. A thrice damned fool. I am so sorry. I love you._

The fourth…

_I don’t deserve you. I didn’t know loving you so much could hurt this much, but this hurt is what I deserve. I love you._

The fifth…

_That bastard Watson purposely played some old rhythm and blues song from the 70s that nearly brought me to tears it hit so close to home. I’d shoot him if I did not deserve the pain of it. I won’t tell you which one. I’ve given you enough pain. I miss you so much. So much! I love you. _

And so it continued… Some letters were short, only a few words. Some letters a couple of sheets. Each one was a love letter in elegant cursive.

Mycroft had not signed any with his name, but all were signed with the same three words of the first letter.

_I love you_.

Greg knew this day would come. He had prepared for it.

He reached inside a side drawer and pulled out the stationary he had bought just for this reason.

He was not crazy enough to try using a fountain pen like Mycroft. Besides, it was not his style.

Greg stared at the paper and tried to write. The paper stared at him. In fact, several balled up and discarded sheets as well as a fresh pristine one stared as he tried to say everything all at once. It was too much.

Greg remembered how furious he was to have noted the lightness of Mycroft's first letter as so few words had been written within. 

“I apologize. I understand now.”

Finally, he knew what he wanted to say and wrote it. When done he sealed the envelope and addressed it to what once was his home in London and stamped it. He placed his keys on top, so he would not forget to take it with him and mail it in the morning.

In the end he also kept it simple. Eight words, all he could give the man he has loved for over a decade before it all fell apart. His simple truth, but he knew it would be enough.

_And God help me, I still love you._

**Author's Note:**

> The 1970s song referred to is the Bee Gee's "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart." 
> 
> John plays for Mycroft the [Al Green cover ](https://youtu.be/PTY6Kv0nPr8)of the song...


End file.
